Embodiments relate generally to cable spooling and more particularly to a mechanism for deployment and retraction of long lengths of cables that may be under high tensile load, and doing so without requiring rotation of the spool upon which the cable is wound.
Other winch mechanisms designed for deployment and retraction of high strength cable use rotating spools.
Other winch or cable deployment mechanisms do not have the ability to perform either free or controlled deployment and controlled retraction.
A spin-casting reel used in fishing accomplishes translation of the winding point along the spool axis by moving the spool relative to the enclosing body, not by translating the guide mechanism relative to the spool.
The “Tethered Satellite System” (TSS) deployer flown on the space shuttle used a rotating spool.
The detection of enemy submarines is one the US Navy's most challenging jobs today, in spite of various technologies and modalities developed and fielded over the past several decades. A key tool in the Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) arsenal is the use of magnetic anomaly detection (MAD). The MAD technique calls for a sensitive magnetometer to be towed behind an aircraft close to the surface of the ocean looking for small and short-trace changes in the dip and variation of the magnetic field that may represent the signature of a submerged submarine. This signature is the result of the effective magnetic moment of the submarine, which is a combination of the ferrous mass of the submarine, the fields of its electrical equipment, and the hull currents and dynamic electric fields of the vessel. Since these field disturbances are very small, highly sensitive magnetometers are used to increase the detection range and probability of detection. To maximize the signal to noise of the system, the MAD sensor is most commonly deployed on a towline from an aircraft both to minimize the effect of magnetic noise from the aircraft and to reduce the distance between the sensor and the target, thereby making the measured signal larger. To enable aircraft to fly long missions and reduce operational costs, it is desirable to integrate MAD sensors into small aircraft and in particular unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). One key challenge here is the reduced payload capacity of smaller aircraft, which requires that components of the sensor towing system be not only non-magnetic, but also lightweight as well. To benefit from the increased sensitivity and tri-axial capabilities of the latest MAD sensors, such as the AN/ASQ-233 magnetometer, the towed body must be highly stable. A MAD system consisting of an AN/ASQ-233 towed by an unmanned air vehicle would provide the Navy with pervasive ASW reconnaissance with integral targeting. Advanced magnetic anomaly detector's such as Polatimic's AN/ASQ-233 multi-mode magnetic detection system uses an Advanced Optically Driven Spin Precession Magnetometer have sensitivity 100 times better than the current MAD systems in the fleet. This higher sensitivity along with the fact that these sensors produce vector magnetometer measurement are driving the need for these sensors to be towed with greater stability, which for this effort has been determined to be ±0.5° in all three axes.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.